Geoffrey Ozin isn’t all that interested in climate-change politics. From the perspective of the University of Toronto chemistry professor, the science of artificial photosynthesis he and his team of approximately 30 researchers — and unaffiliated researchers around the world — are developing is something that should be pursued irrespective of whether or not one views climate change as real.

“It is the only silver bullet we have,” he says in reference to the potential for generating a viable renewable energy source.

Artificial photosynthesis is the concept of mimicking the natural processes of the leaf by taking the 46 gigatons of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere and combining it with sunlight and water to create hydrocarbons such as methane (a key ingredient in natural gas) or methanol (a core element for running fuel cells, making myriad chemicals and powering cars).

Carbon dioxide is a fuel; it’s not a waste product

“Carbon dioxide is a fuel,” says Prof. Ozin. “It’s not a waste product. It’s a whole new take. We just have to learn to run the world in reverse.”

While the concept of artificial photosynthesis has been around for the better part of three decades, the past 10 years have seen an explosion of research and published academic papers on the subject. In the U.S., Washington has funneled $120-million into the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) at the California Institute of Technology and in his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama referred to the program as an example of one of the “Apollo projects of our time”. In Europe, the Solar H Network project has been pursuing similar science with the support of the European Energy Research Alliance.

Will Royea, assistant director for strategy and communication at JCAP, says using artificial photosynthesis to generate a liquid-based hydrocarbon fuel remains the organization’s long-term goal. However, the more immediately achievable objective, he says, is to use the science to generate hydrogen fuel. Yet he’s quick to acknowledge the business case for hydrogen remains a significant challenge.

“Hydrogen is a good fuel, but at this time … we’re not set up to handle hydrogen on a large scale. There have been some recent releases of vehicles that run off of hydrogen, so there appears to be quite a bit of movement in the development of infrastructure of running off of hydrogen, and because that’s also technologically easier to do than producing hydrocarbon fuels, that is our shorter-term goal within JCAP.”

Indeed, in most industrial economies where taxes and penalties on carbon emissions are rare, the viability of hydrogen as a cost-competitive model to non-renewable forms of fuel remains questionable. The Town of Whistler recently discovered that the hard way when B.C. Transit’s five-year $89.5-million plan to power 20 buses using hydrogen was scrapped due to numerous issues, including the fact the hydrogen buses cost four times that of conventional buses and required constant maintenance while the hydrogen fuel itself had to be trucked across Canada from Quebec.

That’s why the ideal end goal of scientists like Mr. Ozin and those at JCAP is to create a liquid or gas-based hydrocarbon fuel — one Mr. Royea envisions would be generated at remote fuel-generating stations (similar to solar farms) located on non-arable land parcels (e.g. the desert) and transported via pipeline to fuelling stations in urban centres where it would then be placed onto tankers and shipped to various points within the city.

If you can turn the thinking around that there’s a new potential for a new carbon dioxide economy, large numbers of jobs and huge amounts of money can be made

For his part, Prof. Ozin doesn’t see the practical implementation of hydrocarbon fuels via artificial photosynthesis as a means of replacing fossil fuels, but rather a way to have the two working in tandem to create carbon neutrality by having the former use the latter’s carbon emissions as a key ingredient to hydrocarbon fuel generation.

“You’re not going to stop people from burning fossil fuels; you’re not going to stop them,” he says. “They need it for chemicals and they need it for energy, and everything we have comes from it. If you can turn the thinking around that there’s a new potential for a new carbon dioxide economy, large numbers of jobs and huge amounts of money can be made.”

As Prof. Ozin notes, “this ain’t going to happen fast”. The timeline for commercializing hydrocarbon fuel will depend on a variety of factors. Mr. Royea predicts JCAP would be able to deliver to private industry within seven years something it could commercialize but “how long it takes industry to build that up and roll that out, I wouldn’t venture a guess,” he adds.

Regardless of the timeline, what’s clear is that the science has the potential not only to neutralize the environmental impact of fossil fuels but also to profoundly change the economics of the entire energy industry.